Read This Now - New Year, Same Crappy Political Reporting

It's far from new news that political reporting in the US is far from anything that aspires to be truly newsworthy or truthful, or to actually inform the readers or viewers etc etc.  With the GOP primary heating up with the advent of the Iowa caucuses George Packer does one of the best jobs that I can recall in summing up the problems with the state of our political coverage...

But political journalism—unlike war reporting—long ago stopped being about what is true or important. Sometime in the nineteen-eighties, reporters began covering politics like sports and entertainment. How many times and ways can you say that the Republican Party has descended into unreality and extremism before you lose your viewers and readers? On the other hand, there’s an endless appetite for stories about Santorum’s effort to reach out beyond his evangelical base, or Gingrich playing the expectations game in Iowa. This stuff is political candy.

Read the whole thing for more details on the current scene in Iowa as well.

See also Greg Sargent's wrap up of Mitt Romney's Big Lie Strategy.